A marketing team looking to successfully introduce a new product or service should think about how to help customers move through the five stages of product adoption.
For example, what kind of marketing, advertising or other promotional tactics can be employed to build customer awareness? If customers show a desire to trial or sample a product, how can this be arranged effectively?
Research also suggests that customers can be divided into groups according to the speed with which they adopt new products.
The customer’s can be classified according to their buying time and potential, suggested classification is as follows:
The “innovators” (those who adopt new products first) are usually relatively young, lively, intelligent, and socially and geographically mobile. They are often of a high socioeconomic group (“AB’s”).
Conversely, the “laggards” (those who adopt last, if at all) tend to be older, less intelligent, less well off and lower on the socioeconomic scale.
It follows from the above model that when a business launches a new product or service, the customers who buy first are likely to be significantly different from those who buy the product much later. This needs to be borne in mind when developing the marketing mix.
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About Hitesh Bhasin
